Nuragic tribes

The Nuragic tribes were a Sardinian civilization which lasted from the 1700s BC to 238 BC. The island had been inhabited since at least 3200 BC, but the Nuragic culture developed as new peoples came to the island from mainland Italy during the Bronze Age. During the mid-2nd millennium BC, megalithic towers known as nuraghes were built, giving their name to the cultures which built them. The Nuragic Sardinians were one of the Sea Peoples who destroyed the Hittite Empire and invaded Mycenaean Greece and Egypt, and Sardinian swordsmen were hired as mercenaries by Pharaoh Ramesses II during the 13th century BC. After 900 BC, Phoenician merchants began to visit the island with increased frequency, and a failed Carthaginian expedition to conquer Sardinia in 540 BC led to the rise of Mago I of Carthage in a political revolution. In 509 BC, the Sardinians attacked the Carthaginians' coastal sites, and Mago's brother Hamilcar succeeded in conquering coastal Sardinia. The Nuragic culture survived in the mountainous interior of the island until 238 BC, when the Roman Republic conquered the island during the Punic Wars, although their culture would continue to exist as long as until the 6th century AD.